


consider this: frost giants are strong as hell!

by jewishhelenarobles



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Neverwhere - All Media Types, Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, actually way milder tbh, little bit gory but not excessively so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-20
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-30 01:13:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15741120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jewishhelenarobles/pseuds/jewishhelenarobles
Summary: Loki dies, is revivificated, and has a fine old time with the friendly neighborhood denizens of London Below.





	consider this: frost giants are strong as hell!

**Author's Note:**

> Just for the sake of clarity, Midgard and the Earth that has London Below are in different universes.

He was really dead. Really and truly dead. It had taken thousands of years of attempts, but Thanos had actually, finally succeeded. The man who had survived death by stabbing, by poison, by garrotting wire, and even one time by whipped cream was kaput, finito, done for.

As Loki’s corpse (and it really was his corpse) cooled on the wreckage of the Asgardian ship, a man in a place many light-years away roused himself from his mid-morning ritual of picking the lice out of his hair and eating them to investigate the twinge he felt in the direction of a small brass-worked box. Could it be? he mused. There had been so many false flags over the years, but he had a feeling that this was the legitimate article. Still, he decided to wait it out for at least twenty-four hours, which was the time it generally took for Loki to recover from a death.

The man, who was called Old Bailey, returned to his daily routine. He saw to his pigeons, made lunch, washed the dishes, salvaged what he could from the river -- and yet he still couldn’t shake the feeling that something was terribly wrong. Shaking his head, he filled in a crossword with the wrong words in the boxes, as was his custom before bed, and tried to put it from his mind. The chances of this one being the real O’Neal were staggeringly low.

The next morning, things were the same, if not worse. He could tell that Loki, who was actually probably really dead, was not somewhere where his body would stay intact very long. 

“I suppose it’s time,” he grumbled, and shuffled over to fetch the box.

It opened with a click and a flash of green light -- showier than the boxes of most other people who’d done favors for him, especially considering it was his ninth life and not his only one -- and the process was begun.

Old Bailey reached for his dredging hook and waved it around until he found some purchase. He could already feel the great river washing the body to him, but it’d be a while before it got to him to be revived. Loki had been truly far when he died, farther than far, star systems and galaxies and universes away.

Still, everything got to Old Bailey in the end.

 

“What in the hell took you so long?” Loki demanded, wringing icy water out of his black overcoat. He still looked a little blue around the edges, as he was liable to for a long time after a nasty end like that. “I’m freezing cold and I think I even started to decompose a little. It’s disgusting.”

Old Bailey said nothing, just continued eating his tinned tuna. It was good tuna and he wanted to concentrate on it.

“Are you seriously giving me the silent treatment?” said Loki. “Gods, I forgot how tiresome you were.”

Old Bailey didn’t reply.

“I’m going to pay a visit to my friends down here,” Loki went on. “Maybe I’ll call in a few more favors. But I need to get back to the Nine Realms as quickly as possible. Lots of people are going to die, and, well, normally I wouldn’t care, but since it wasn’t my idea I’ll have to put a stop to it just on principle.”

Old Bailey didn’t say anything. He thought there might be a rock in the tin.

“My brother might even think I’m permanently dead,” said Loki. “And, much as I’m sure he’s enjoying that, I’m going to have to disabuse him of that notion.”

Old Bailey fished the rock out and commenced crunching on it. It wasn’t a rock, after all, but a large cockroach that had frozen solid during last night’s cold snap. Not that it mattered; roaches were rich in natural fiber, if not as fun to collect.

“Jesus Christ, that’s horrifying to watch,” said Loki. “I’d best be off now. Give my regards to -- well, you don’t actually see anyone on a regular basis, do you? Just -- take care, then. Watch out for angels and suchlike.” He swung himself neatly over the side of the roof and began to make his way down the ladder.

“You’re never going to get off of this world,” Old Bailey called after him. “Not in this life.”

“Of course not, you dunce,” said Loki, peering over the side of the building. “That’s why I’m going to find a new one.”

 

“Marquis!” said Loki, showing himself into the den where his old -- friend with benefits? Enemy? Vassal? Ah well, it didn’t matter -- was residing. “So good to see you again.”

“Stay away from me, you oleaginous rogue,” the Marquis snapped. “Can’t you see I’m occupied?”

Loki looked around. He did seem to have company over. There was a scruffy-looking young woman lounging against the far wall and a bewildered-looking young man in the chair across from the Marquis. Loki smiled and waved at them while trying desperately to remember what he had done to deserve the frigid welcome.

“Who is this, Carabas?” asked the scruffy young woman, looking at Loki levelly. She was quite pretty, with dark hair and a long straight nose and eyes whose color he couldn’t put his finger on. Loki wondered why he didn’t know her.

“No one you’d wish to concern yourself with,” said the Marquis darkly. Of course! He was still angry about the double-cross of 1891 when Loki had extracted the large favor from him. It was too bad; Loki hated when people were angry with him.

Well, they’d both have to live with it, at least for a while. “I need a temporary place to stay,” he said to the Marquis. “I was recently dead and --”

“-- you should have stayed that way,” said the Marquis crisply. 

“Rude,” said Loki. “Anyway, I’m not feeling my best, and I’m going to need a new life soon, so I was hoping to rest and recuperate at your place. Again, just for a bit. It’s not like I’m planning to move in, ha ha.”

“No. Kindly vacate the premises at once,” the Marquis snapped. “I am not sure how else to communicate this to you, but you are not welcome here. This is a place of safety for me and my friends. You, as always, will inevitably cock it up.”

“Ah, well, Marquis,” said Loki, “I really didn’t want to speak so coarsely to such an old and valued… frenemy, but I’m not asking. I’m calling in a favor. The small one.”

The Marquis visibly deflated. He looked so pathetic, Loki almost wanted to take it back. “I don’t know why,” he said, “but I always held on hope that you’d use the small favor for something actually small.”

“This is small, I promise,” said Loki. “I’ll wash my own clothes, do my own dishes, even make dinner if you want me to. I’ll be the perfect houseguest. And again, it’s not going to be long. I have another friend I need to see in a few weeks.”

“Fine,” said the Marquis. “But you had better not bring any trouble back here.”

“Wonderful!” said Loki. “Now, who are your charming friends?”

“This is Richard Mayhew,” said the Marquis, gesturing towards the young man. “Hands off of him, please. And this is Door,” he continued, nodding at the young woman. “Again, hands off.”

“You have such a low opinion of me,” Loki groused. “Wait -- Door? Not the Door? I thought your whole family were murdered.”

“They were,” said Door.

“Please refrain from traumatizing my friends,” said the Marquis.

“Oh, dear, sorry, yes, that was rude,” said Loki. “It’s really an honor to meet you. And, er, congratulations on surviving!”

Door looked stricken. Evidently that was the wrong thing to say too.

“Actually,” said the Marquis, “perhaps you shouldn’t speak to them at all. Come on, there’s a storage chamber in the back that you’ll fit into if you squish.”

“What a way to treat a friend come in from the cold,” said Loki as the Marquis frog-marched him down the hall, away from Richard’s questioning eyes. He was really adorable, with that confused expression and hair the same shade as Door’s. “Do you have any idea how far I’ve come?”

“I really don’t care,” said the Marquis. “And whatever you’re going to say about your death, mine was worse.”

“Oh, you’ve died too, we have so much to catch up on,” Loki pressed on. He knew better than anyone that relationships took work to maintain; his therapist on Midgard, Dr. Adler, said he was a natural “taker” rather than a “giver” and he needed to check this tendency in himself whenever it arose. “Such as, how did you acquire Richard and Door? And when did you change your hair? It’s so stylish, I really like the yellow part in front, very Vanaheim fall season.”

“I didn’t acquire Richard and Door, I rescued them,” said the Marquis. “And my hair --” he tossed his long dreadlocks over his shoulder dramatically -- “is none of your business.”

At least he, unlike Old Bailey, was speaking to Loki. It was something.

“Sweet dreams, old friend,” Loki said, folding himself into the proffered storage cabinet. Gods, it really was small. “See you in the morning!”

The Marquis rolled his eyes. Loki smiled. For the first time in a good while, he couldn’t wait for the day ahead.

 

“Rough day?” Door asked as Loki made his way gingerly into the room and collapsed into a chair. She was clearly holding back laughter, which was inconsiderate, but Loki liked her and was willing to let it slide.

“Very,” he said. “The other bodyguards were… less than friendly.”

“You lost?” Door questioned, reaching into a bowl of dead crickets and grabbing a handful.

“I won,” he confessed. “After the contest, the Earl took one look at me and decided I definitely didn’t look like bodyguard material. In fact, he was a bit frightened that I was going to kill him myself, so he sicced the losers on me. They were happy to comply.”

Door finished chewing, dabbed her mouth with a napkin, and said, “You don’t look much the worse for wear for having gone up against London Below’s most fearsome killers.”

“Fearsome they may be,” said Loki, “but clever they are not.”

“True,” said Door, grinning.

“Also,” Loki continued, “I’m far more scratched up than I hoped to be. I have a cut on my face, I tore the cuff of my pants getting away, and I even broke a nail.” He flexed his fingers, each adorned with expertly applied black nail varnish. He was going to have to repaint the broken one, or get an acrylic nail. Quelle tragique.

“Why do you want to be a bodyguard, anyway?” Door asked.

“I don’t,” said Loki. “Not really. Truth to tell, I need the money. Lives don’t just grow on trees, except maybe the Yggdrasil, and honestly I’m not too interested in hanging upside down for nine days and nine nights to get one anyway.”

“Fair enough, but still, you don’t seem the honest-day’s-work type,” Door said. “Why not just trick someone out of their money?”

“I was going to call in the big favor on our dear friend the Marquis de Carabas,” Loki replied, “but he seems to have conveniently lost all his savings, and in my weakened condition it’s probably not a good idea to piss off anyone with the kind of cash I need.”

“Hmm,” Door assented. “Oh! Here’s Richard.”

“What did I miss?” Richard asked, shutting the front door behind him. 

“Loki tried to become a bodyguard to the Earl to earn money for a life and got beat up, I liberated a tapestry from Bond Street to give back to the Black Friars, and I think the Marquis is still out looking for food,” Door said. “All we’ve got in the house are these dried crickets.”

“Oh, ew, those are nasty when they’re stale,” said Richard. He looked quizzically at Loki. “You’re looking for a job, then?”

“Yes, unfortunately,” said Loki. “None of my schemes are working out so far, which is rare for me. I’m very good at scheming.”

“Have you tried London Above? I used to live there,” Richard offered. “Maybe there’s a job there you can do.”

“What kind of job do you mean?” Loki asked. “I need something that pays a lot of money, very fast.”

“I dunno, maybe corporate law? You look the type,” said Richard.

“I did pass the bar in Midgard in 1643, but I never got re-certified since then,” said Loki, “so I’m not sure I can still do that.”

“Well, then, what about finance?” Richard suggested. “That was my area before.”

“Oh, I did that for a while!” said Loki. “I loved it. I was the one who gave Andrew Carnegie the idea to use the Pinkertons for union-busting, you know. But alas, I’m wanted for insider trading in at least sixty sovereign nations, so I think that one’s a non-starter as well.”

“Okay,” said Richard, “what was the last thing you did for work? Do you have any marketable skills to offer?”

“I was a kept man for the emperor of a scrap yard who held enormous gladiatorial competitions between extraterrestrial ne’er-do-wells,” said Loki. “Somehow, I don’t think there’s another position like that available at the moment. And I have plenty of marketable skills. I just need to find the market for them.”

“That’s it,” Door said. “The Market! There’s plenty of jobs available there.”

“The Night Market?” Richard asked. “Didn’t he just get beat up by the bodyguards there?”

“He’s a trickster,” said Door. “The Marquis told me. He can alter his appearance. No one will know it’s him.”

“That all sounds nice,” said Loki, “but what exactly are the jobs available there? I’ve never stayed there long enough to find out.”

“Oh, searching for treasure, helping repair artifacts, stealing things from people,” said Door, “that kind of thing. You’d be great at it. All you have to do is stand still for a few minutes and some wizened old granny will grab you and ask you for something. Just remember to stand firm in negotiating your price.”

“Sounds easy,” Loki mused. “Too easy. Are you sure it’ll be that simple?”

“Oh, no, of course not, I’ve totally glossed over all the hard bits,” said Door, “but those shouldn’t be a problem for you.”

This Night Market thing was sounding pretty great. Maybe things were finally looking up. As if to punctuate his thought, the Marquis came sweeping in the door laden down with groceries.

“Whatever’s going on,” he said, looking around the room at the unlikely group, “I am certain I will not like it.”

 

Door was right. The easy part was getting a job. The harder part was actually doing it.

The Rat King had been all too happy to hire Loki to steal back his manuscript from the bloody Bakers of Baker Street, and Loki had been thrilled to accept. What his guide hadn’t told him until later was that it was a fool’s errand, an impossible task, like going out for a can of striped paint. The Bakers had guarded the manuscript for so long that no one knew whether the King had really owned it first at all. He was a goner, Loki’s giggling guide explained, from the second he walked out of Rat territory.

Loki was not so convinced. “Goner” was a strong word for someone who had escaped a grand total of 137 certain deaths. And he hated to take Thor’s advice about anything, but the truism he liked to spout about having a positive attitude really was helpful sometimes. Loki was not going to let his natural tendency toward negativity keep him from his money. 

If this had been Thor’s idea, Loki would have called him an idiot and figured out the best way to minimize his losses by now. But it wasn’t Thor’s idea. Thor wasn’t here, and nor was Valkyrie, and the power to command an army was so far out of his reach he almost couldn’t believe he’d once had it. All he had was his wits, his tricks, and his skills in hand-to-hand combat — a situation that, while exhilarating at first, grew old fairly quickly. 

Baker Street was totally covered in flour. Loki guessed that that shouldn’t have surprised him. What were objectively surprising were the meat hooks with human carcasses attached dangling intermittently from the ceiling.

“Sweeney Todd much?” Loki muttered to his guide, realizing a second later that the man had ditched him, probably ages ago. Whatever, it wasn’t like the God of Mischief needed to be guided in the first place. He’d been in far worse situations alone.

“Hey!” came a shout from down the road. A florid little man in an apron that looked anywhere from Jacobean to Paleolithic was bustling over to Loki. “Are you the new capture from Above? We needed you on blood declotting detail ages ago!”

“Yes, sir, of course, sir,” said Loki, bowing his head. “Right away, sir.”

“Blooming kids,” the man grumbled. “Can’t tell a knife from a nonce. Flesh of the beast is this way!”

Loki badly wanted to stab him now, but the farther down the road he went, the higher the chances he’d get to the manuscript without getting caught. “Er, for future reference,” he tried, “where do the head bakers work? Just so I know, ah, where not to go.”

“Ambitious, are you?” the man said, sizing him up with watery eyes. “Don’t get your hopes up. In all probability you’ll be the filling in the pies by morning. Head baker’s been here since the Romans colonized the place, and he doesn’t take kindly to upstarts. Bloody wanker,” he added, then looked stricken. “Don’t tell anyone I called him that.”

“No, sir,” said Loki demurely. 

“Anyway, here y’are,” said the man. The meat hooks were a little denser here, as were the people. Most of them looked exhausted.

“Thank you, sir,” Loki said. The man grunted and bustled away.

“You a new worker?” asked one of the people on the floor. He had on a welding mask tipped up to show his sweating face and a sort of squirt gun in his right hand.

“No, I’m a messenger,” said Loki. “Got a message for a Mr. Charles Smith here, then I’ve got a few more up the street. Big important one for the head baker.”

“Charlie?” Squirt Gun called. Loki breathed an inward sigh of relief that there really was a Charles Smith in this area. Things were always so much easier when his lies turned out to be true.

“I hear you,” a terribly old man wheezed, limping over to Loki. “What’s your news?”

“It’s your wife,” Loki said, arranging his face into an expression of polite commiseration and praying his luck would hold.

“Oh, hell,” Charlie Smith groaned. Perfect, thought Loki. “I should have known the old harpy would be trying to bugger me from beyond the grave. What does she want now?”

“She, er, seems to have… awoken,” said Loki. “She wants to rewrite her will. Posthumously.”

“And she needs me for that, eh?” Charlie mused.

Loki shrugged. “Apparently.”

“Well, thanks, I guess,” said Charlie. “I’ve never been one for shooting the messenger, heh heh.”

“So sorry to bother you,” said Loki. “I’d best be off now. Could you tell me the way to, ah… fruit processing, pastry rolling, and the head baker’s quarters?”

“729, 245, and 1,” said Squirt Gun. “Just keep walking up the odd side of the street.”

“Thanks a lot, bye,” Loki said, turning away — not quickly enough to avoid the sight of another worker using her own squirt gun to blast little bits of tissue out of a sliced-open heifer. So that was what that was for. Disgusting.

1 Baker Street towered over the other buildings, its spires and minarets reminiscent of a giant meringue. It was odd that he hadn’t seen it before — maybe someone needed to tell you it was there before it was visible to the eye. He was sure that it was where the manuscript must be; it looked like the only place clean enough to keep a book that old. Now the only thing left was to get inside. 

“Business?” demanded the doughy sentry outside the service door.

“Cleaning,” Loki mumbled, hanging his head obsequiously. “I’m off my break.” 

The sentry frowned. “Didn’t know you little fuckers got breaks. Oh, well, I won’t tell, as long as you owe me a favor. Hurry-scurry in before I change my mind.”

“‘Course,” said Loki, shambling in past the sentry. The cleaning gambit always worked. It was way simpler and more effective than the pizza delivery one.

From long experience living with weird old rich people, Loki knew that as a rule of thumb, the older and more valuable a thing was, the lower down in the building it would be stored. He didn’t expect it to be that easy, but it was a place to start.

The building was a maze. Twice he almost got caught in teeming ectoplasm of the type one found in the Gap, and he was pretty sure the walls were getting narrower around him. Childish ruses might have gotten him this far, but he’d need all his wits about him now.

Speaking of wits, was that a runic poem? Loki leaned into an alcove in the wall for a closer look — and nearly got his eyebrows zapped off. It was definitely defended by some sort of hex.

Thor wasn’t right when he’d called Loki a witch, but he wasn’t entirely wrong, either. What most people didn’t understand was that witchcraft, like technical support, was 90% clicking through to find the problem. The other 10% was knowing how to make people’s toes fall off, but Loki didn’t need to know how to do that. Nobody needed to know how to do that.

Loki put in his earbuds in order to get into what his friend Darcy Lewis called “the zone”. He pulled out his iPod and scrolled through the only four songs on it, the ones he considered to be the finest ever composed by human musicians: the Rites of Spring, Rhapsody in Blue, Chain of Fools, and Toxic. As was his custom, he settled on Britney.

The security hexes surrounding the stone in the wall were mostly simple to break, but some were quite good. And quite old. Very, very old. He just needed to insert one little knot here, and then —

“There,” he said as the stone swung forward. The manuscript did seem pretty ancient, but on opening it, it wasn’t legible in any of the 1,079 languages Loki was fluent in or in any of the many hundreds of thousands with which he could at least order a glass of mead. Of course — if he could open the stone, the most highly trained magicians in London Below could too. It was in unbreakable code.

The magic around the book pulsated in Loki’s mind. Was it asking for something? Ah, yes, authentication, that’d be it. The head baker must be the only one able to make the book readable. 

The job wasn’t to get the book. It was to trick the head baker into opening it.

Well, that’s an entire day shot, Loki thought, putting the book back glumly. He’d need to think of another plan.

 

When Loki arrived the next morning, he knocked on the front door. The big one.

“Who’s there?” the watchman from the upper window called down, taking in Loki and his entourage (constructed with a few old cloaks from the Marquis’ house and a cheap animation spell). 

“An emissary from Paris Below,” he said, affecting a French accent. “We have decided to see if our neighbors in England can cook as they say. Mr. Martins will reside here and taste.”

The effect was immediate. The door banged open and Loki was bundled hastily in. Without time to verify the visit was real, the bakers would be scrambling to come up with something good enough for the famous French chef to eat. And Loki knew they wouldn’t be able to — not without magical help.

In the bustle, he went invisible and headed for the tunnel he’d been in yesterday. There was somebody ahead of him, just as he’d expected. He was a little man, and he had to stop a few times on the way to catch his breath, which was annoying. Finally, they arrived at the alcove.

The man looked right and left like a nervous pedestrian, then took the book out and stroked it. He spoke a few words and opened the book. Loki looked over his shoulder. English! Middle English, of course, but still readable.

“I’ll be taking that, thanks, bye,” he said, bashing him on the head with the flat of his knife. Crude, but it worked. Loki turned on his heel and prepared to saunter out without a scratch.

Except of course that wasn’t going to happen, because the halls were suddenly full of sentries, and they were getting narrower.

“Oh,” said Loki, brandishing his knife and reconsidering all of his life choices. “Shit.”

 

“All in all,” he told the Marquis, Door, and Richard over dinner, “it wasn’t actually that hard.”

“Your arm is literally in a cast,” said Richard. “You spent the entire afternoon asking if you’d ever play the piano again.”

“I don’t actually play piano,” Loki said thoughtfully. “Anyway, that’s not what I meant. If I’d had more time to think of an elegant plan, I wouldn’t have even had this. Brute force and beginner-level con artistry — those were all it took. I think it was supposed to be so hard only because the book was old and famous. It’s like that stealing paintings, too.”

“Much as I adore hearing you wax poetic on the subject of your own genius,” the Marquis cut in, “what are you planning to do now? You’ve made an enemy in Baker Street, and you can’t count on the Rat King to protect you.”

“Nice of you to offer to do that yourself,” said Loki sarcastically.

“As I have repeatedly told you, I do not care a whit about you or your bodily integrity,” said the Marquis.

“It actually doesn’t matter, because I’ll be out of your hair sooner than expected. I’ve got word that my friend is returning home tomorrow. I’m going to Chicago,” Loki said.

“Chicago Below?” asked Richard interestedly.

“No, just regular Chicago, sorry to disappoint,” said Loki. “It’s one of the only places in the universe I know I’m still welcome. I’m going to fly in a Midgard-type passenger plane to get there.”

“I can honestly say that I sincerely hope your flight is on time,” said the Marquis.

Goodbyes the next day were quick, but Loki liked to think they were at least a little heartfelt. He wouldn’t forget the help they’d given him, if only under extreme duress, and he certainly wouldn’t forget the case of rare coins and human bones acquired from an extremely disgruntled Rat King that was currently safely stowed in his carry-on luggage. Chicago would be a lovely change of pace; perhaps he’d take himself shopping as a treat.

“Another day in the life of the God of Mischief,” he said into an imaginary camera as he left through the door into the airport that Door had cut.

“Another day in the life of a delusional charlatan,” said the Marquis behind him. “Feel free not to ever return.”

So maybe his old friend (flame? adversary?) hadn’t forgiven him yet, even with all the dishes he’d washed. So who cared? He was Loki Laufeyson, and right now, there was nowhere to go but up.

**Author's Note:**

> I haven’t read or watched Neverwhere in aaaages, so sorry if everyone’s out of character! Creds to Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt for the title, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You for the name of Loki’s therapist, and that one fanvid of Loki breaking everything in Stuttgart set to Britney Spears Toxic for the underlying theme of this fic (Loki’s definitely a Joy Division man too, but I wanted to showcase his Britney side).


End file.
